


Trees Without Roots

by Lauralot



Series: Alexander Pierce should have died slower [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autism, Diapers, Family Reunions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Non-Sexual Age Play, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Zoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's nervous about meeting his family after all the Winter Soldier business.</p><p>Tony decides that wild animals would make the reunion smoother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trees Without Roots

**Author's Note:**

> This story was partially inspired by a comment from [Bluandorange](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/11360227) on [Love is for Children.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790728) It was also inspired by suggestions from [ravenously](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenously/pseuds/ravenously), [WritingCyan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingCyan/pseuds/WritingCyan), and [bofurrific](archiveofourown.org/users/bofurrific/pseuds/bofurrific).
> 
> There are spoilers for the movie _Maleficent_ in the first section of the story. If you would like to skip this section, the second section should bring you up to speed without missing much.

**“Trees without roots fall over.”**

— Unknown

  


Bucky tries to wipe away his tears before Steve notices.

On screen, Maleficent stands at Aurora’s bedside. “Not a day shall pass that I don’t miss your smile,” she’s saying. As she’s bending down to kiss the princess, Bucky stares at the floor. He doesn’t turn his head; that would be too obvious. But his breathing must betray him, because as Aurora’s waking up, he can see Steve turn to look at him from the corner of his eye.

“Buck?”

Bucky nearly says “I’m fine,” but he’s afraid it’ll come out like a sob and get everyone worrying, not just Steve. They’ve likely already taken note; his breaths are obviously disturbed now and sound carries in a small space like an airplane. He just shakes his head. At least there aren’t tears on his face anymore.

Steve lays a hand on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?” he asks softly. “Is it the movie? Aurora’s okay, Bucky, see? Her mommy woke her up.”

“I’m fine, Steve.” His voice is rough, a little lower than usual, but at least he doesn’t sound as if he’s on the verge of tears. “I just—it’s nothing, I just needed a second—”

“We don’t have to watch this,” Steve says, except because they’re on Tony’s private jet, there’s just one big movie screen. If they stop watching, everyone else has to stop too. “What’s up?”

“It’s _nothing_.” Like that’s going to dissuade Steve Rogers, who Bucky thinks was as stubborn and impassable as a mountain even when he was half this size. “It’s—okay, it’s the movie, but I’m _fine._ ”

Then Steve’s rubbing his shoulder, and what Bucky wouldn’t do to sink into the touch. But he can’t. Not today. He has to keep it together. “What is it?”

“I don’t like that Maleficent’s going to be her mother,” Bucky says. He wants to leave it at that, but the words keep spilling out anyway, hands tightening around the bear on his lap. “She cursed her and tricked her and what about her real mother? It’s Maleficent’s fault that Aurora was away from her mama for all those years and never got to know her and never _will_ get a chance to know her because she’s dead and it’s not fair and I don’t like that they cut off Maleficent’s wings and I don’t like that they made us _like_ her and I just—I liked the cartoon better.”

He stares down at the floor again, but he can’t keep from blushing. He doesn’t have to look at Steve’s face to see the mix of understanding and concern blossoming there. Great. Can’t even watch a damn Disney movie without projecting his personal damages. And he didn’t even have to be five to do it.

“I was getting bored anyway.” That’s Tony, speaking up from one of the seats in front of them. “Way too much narration in this flick for my taste. Anyone mind if we cut it short?”

There are murmurs of assent throughout the plane, even though Bucky thinks Thor had been very much enjoying it. And just like that, the movie switches off.

Bucky stares out the window. The sun’s beginning to rise.

“We could watch something else,” Steve offers. “Or, if you want to take Bucky Bear and play in the aisle—”

The aisle is very wide. Bucky shakes his head. “Bucky Bear’s sleeping.”

Neither of them had any sleep last night. Bucky was too nervous about the trip to even close his eyes, so Bucky Bear had played out missions with the rest of the Bearvengers for hours. Now Bucky Bear’s fast asleep, tired from all the exertion.

“Want a nap?” Steve asks. “There are blankets and the seats recline—”

“Can’t.” Bucky’s not wearing protection and he refuses to risk an accident. Not when he’s meeting his sisters. He could change clothes, sure, but this is nerve-wracking enough without having that hang over his head all day long.

It took forever after the trial to set up this visit. “Not guilty” isn’t the same as “free to do as you like.” There was still a sentence. By all rights, Bucky’s meant to be under care in a mental health facility indefinitely. He’d even toured some, because the courts said he could pick as long as the security measures were up to their standards. They weren’t bad places: clean and quiet like hotels he couldn’t check out of. One even had a pool. But Bucky had hyperventilated and been sick at the thought of living away from Steve, and so Maria had gone back to court.

Bucky didn’t have to be present that time. He isn’t sure what arguments Maria made, but he’s allowed to stay in the tower. He has to see court-appointed doctors along with his regular therapists now, and there are about a thousand checks and balances to make sure he’s properly contained, but he can stay with his friends.

He’s not meant to leave the state, though, which is part of the reason it took so long to arrange this visit. There’s a tracking bracelet strapped around his ankle and Bucky’s pretty sure they’ll be under surveillance the whole time they’re in San Diego. There were also travel arrangements to consider: there are about forty of his relatives coming to this excursion, and most of them needed transportation and lodging. Plus security, as there’s a sizeable contingent of the population who are very angry about Bucky’s verdict. Bucky and the Avengers can hold their own, but he won’t have anyone hurting his family.

Even if almost all of them are complete strangers who probably only know him as a broken sex toy with a gun.

“Are you hungry, Bucky?” Clint asks. Everyone’s around him now. He’s not sure when that happened, but there’s a flood of warmth through him at the sight even as he’s gritting his teeth. “It’s about breakfast time—you want an apple juice?”

“A coffee.” It isn’t as though the caffeine will do him any good—his metabolism’s too quick for that—but at least it might have a placebo effect.

“Coffee?” Steve repeats, looking very much like a parent whose kid just asked for a sip of beer or a bite of blue cheese.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’m not five right now, Steve.”

“You’re a nervous wreck, Buck.” Steve’s hand settles over his, and only then does Bucky realize that he’s been trembling. “You can be little if you want to be. This is a really big day for you—it could help you relax.”

“But,” Bucky protests. He wants it. He wants to be hugged and soothed and given breakfast in the shape of a smiley face on his plate. He wants Thor to pick him up and Tasha to color with him, wants Tony to point at clouds out the window and tell him the names of the different kinds. But above all, he doesn’t want to be humiliated “I can’t do that today. My family—”

“Your family won’t care,” Steve says firmly.

“And we don’t land for three more hours,” Natasha adds. Her expression is neutral and Bucky can’t tell if she wants to play or not.

He wants to so badly.

“Bucky?” Steve asks.

His voice is so soft even he can barely hear himself. “’Kay.”

Daddy smiles, small but bright as the sunrise out the windows. He reaches forward to undo Bucky’s seatbelt, which he’s had on since the takeoff. “What do you want to do, Bucky?”

Wake up Bucky Bear and play Parachuting into The Enemy Base. Sit on his daddy’s lap and be held for the rest of the flight. Listen to more of Thor’s stories about bilgesnipe and eight-legged horses. Ask Clint about Budapest again and see what Tasha throws at him this time for telling it wrong. Figure out why there’s a button in the plane that makes a pole come up out of the floor; Daddy wouldn’t let Tony explain that earlier. Sleep. “I dunno.”

“Here,” Sam says, pulling a deck of brightly colored cards from his pocket. “Have you ever played Uno?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Want to learn?” Sam asks. “We can all get in a circle on the floor. It’s easy and it’s fun.”

Bucky nods. He starts to get up but then Thor has him, lifting. “Allow me,” the Asgardian says. His hair hangs over his shoulder and almost brushes against Bucky’s face. “You’ve been under a great deal of strain, my friend.”

Bucky can walk on his own, but it’s nice to be held and rare for anyone but Daddy to be able to do it. And then Thor tosses him up maybe an inch before catching him again, and Bucky laughs and goes limp, letting himself be carried.

They play Uno. Bucky wins once before breakfast and once after. By the second time, he’s forgotten all about the movie.

*

The zoo was Tony’s idea.

The visit had to be in San Diego: Bucky’s sister Rebecca is living in a retirement community there and can’t handle the strain of long distance travel. They could have rented out a hotel conference room and had this reunion indoors and catered, but there wouldn’t be anything to do beyond sit and deal with his family’s scrutiny. The beach is out of the question as his sisters are too old for much swimming and hate sand. Disneyland is too far of a drive for Rebecca, far too public, and unwieldy with a group as large as this.

Bucky had been resigning himself to a rented convention room, nonstop questions, and inevitable meltdowns from his bored great-great-great nieces and nephews, when Tony had offered the San Diego Zoo as a solution. It could accommodate strollers and wheelchairs, gave everyone plenty of things to stare at besides Bucky, and Tony was able to buy it out for the day.

Bucky had leapt at the chance the second his sisters approved it. Nothing had sounded more appealing than not being the only creature on display.

Now that their van is pulling into the zoo parking lot and Bucky can see his family assembled, any relief he’d felt is gone.

“Here,” he mutters, shoving Bucky Bear at Steve. “You hold him.”

Steve arches a brow, though he readily accepts the bear. “Why?”

“’Cause I don’t want my family to think I’m weird.” Looking at the crowd of them through their transport’s tinted windows, all Bucky can think of is the people gathered screaming around the court house. He ought to just leave Bucky Bear in the van, but that’s dangerous. The bear needs to stay at his side.

“What if they think _I’m_ weird?” Steve asks, smiling.

“You are weird,” Bucky says. “My sisters know that already.”

The van comes to a stop, and Bucky can feel his friends’ eyes fall on him. He stays seated, immobilized until Steve reaches over to undo the seatbelt. Then he smacks his hand away. “I can get it myself.” He’s an adult now. He can’t risk fucking that up, and he’s under enough strain already. “I just—I don’t wanna get out first, is all.”

“You leave that,” says Tony, scrambling over Clint and Sam, “to me. Don’t worry, Bucky—whenever Tony Stark makes an appearance, people forget about everyone else.” 

God, Bucky hopes that’s true. When they first began planning the trip, it was just going to be Bucky and Steve. And Sam, for moral support. And then he had to invite Tony, because Tony was the one buying out the zoo. Then Bucky had realized just how many people were going to be at this gathering and, well, the more Avengers to take the focus off him, the better. Besides, he couldn’t go to a zoo with red pandas without bringing Natasha, and he couldn’t invite her without Clint. Thor would love to see more Midgardian animals, and Bucky wasn’t about to leave Bruce as the odd one out.

Then Tony’s throwing open the door and stepping outside—Bucky leans back out of view—throwing his arms out wide as he straightens. “Have no fear, people, Iron Man is here.”

There’s a pause.

“You’re not the Winter Soldier,” one of the children yells, immediately followed by a woman’s scolding.

“No,” Tony says. “Can’t say that I am. But I _did_ save the world from aliens and I’ve won _People’s_ Sexiest Man Alive three times and counting.”

A woman shouts, and her voice is so shaken with age that it takes Bucky a moment to understand her words: “Where the hell’s my brother?”

He can’t keep his sisters waiting, his own comfort be damned. Bucky takes a slow breath and tries to will his heart to steady. These people already know his dark secrets. The whole world does. He can’t possibly humiliate himself any more than he already has. He forces his right hand to stop shaking as he steps out of the van.

The sea of people staring back at him is almost familiar, like running into an acquaintance but coming up short on a name and the circumstances of the last meeting. Their faces tug at the edge of his memories, full of resemblances to relatives he’s long forgotten. One woman’s eyes: Are they close to his cousin’s, or his great-aunt’s? The spatter of freckles over a man’s nose: Just like someone he used to remember.

They don’t look judging, not yet. Unsure, hesitant, as if they don’t know if he’ll say hello, cry, or start snapping necks. As he stand there, hearing Steve get out of the van behind him, Bucky watches more than a dozen sets of eyes fall to his left hand. Someone—a young boy, he thinks—whispers “cool.”

Each of his relatives has a security badge clipped somewhere on their clothing. Happy arrived the night before at the hotel where Tony set up Bucky’s family, to make sure no one was secretly plotting to assassinate the Winter Soldier. Happy’s still with them, looking frazzled at the back of the group as a small girl tears the badge from the strap of her overalls and throws it to the ground.

Happy can be very determined when it comes to security measures. Bucky guesses that’s a part of why no one was thrilled to see Tony.

At the forefront of the crowd are two elderly women in wheelchairs. The woman on the right—in what looks to be a zoo-provided chair—is his youngest sister, Josephine. Bucky knows this because Jo sent a photo of herself to Bucky after he got her email address. The woman on the left, older and in a long-term chair, looks so familiar that Bucky speaks without thinking.

“Grandma?”

“What?” Rebecca—of course it’s Becca, there’s nothing left of their grandmother now but bones in the ground—shouts, beckoning him over. Her fingers are stiff, bent like a cartoon witch’s. “I’m half-deaf, Bucky, you’ll have to yell to talk my ear off like you used to.”

He closes the space between them, letting his sister close a trembling hand weakly around his wrist. She’s holding the sleeve rather than the metal, and Bucky’s grateful because his hand is freezing. If the first touch from his sister in seventy years was a flinch away, he doubts he’d be able to hold it together. “Becca.”

“We all know my name,” Becca yells. “Is that the only thing you’ve got to say after all this time?” Her skin is so thin and translucent with age that he can nearly see the blood flowing through her veins. Her hair is pure white now, so different from the dark brown he remembers, and thin enough that he can make out her scalp. She’s trembling all over, wearing hearing aids and glasses so thick they must be pushing against her eyelashes.

She’s still every bit as beautiful as the last time Bucky saw her.

He says as much and kneels down to hug her, ignoring the way she swats weakly at his back and calls him a damn liar. When he lets go, he does the same for Jo.

His middle sister, Virginia, died at thirty-one in a car crash. She was married—her widower died at eighty-eight, Bucky’s been told—but had no children. It made his eyes sting with tears when he heard the news, first from the loss and then from the realization that their parents had to bury two of their children. But in some sick, deep place within him, Bucky felt a twinge of relief. Virginia used to burst into tears at the drop of a hat, haunted for days by the suffering of characters in their bedtime stories or Bible lessons. Had she been alive when the Winter Soldier’s identity was made public, Bucky thinks her heart may have stopped.

He’s killed so many people. He couldn’t add his own sister to that list.

“I love you,” Bucky tells them, trying not to shake. “I missed you so much.”

Steve steps up beside them, still holding the bear. Unless Bucky’s forgetting a leave during the war, he thinks this is the first time his sisters ever had to look up to meet Steve’s eye. “Rebecca,” Steve says. “Josephine. It’s wonderful to see you aga—”

“Well!” Becca has that look of burning disapproval that their mama had made an art form. “There’s the shithead who didn’t bother to tell me my brother was still alive.”

“Grandma!” one of the women gasps. “You can’t say that!”

“But he’s a shithead,” Becca protests as Bucky bites through his lip to keep from laughing out loud.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s a shithead, Becca,” Jo says. “You can’t say ‘shithead’ in front of the children.”

“It’s educational!” Becca shouts, and Bucky has to shove his hand against his mouth to stifle the giggles. His great-great nieces and nephews aren’t going to like it if he enforces the “swearing is hilarious” concept in their children’s minds by laughing. But Steve’s got the funniest gaping look and Becca’s so loud she can probably be heard in Oregon, and how can he keep his composure? “The young ones need to know the truth about Captain America!”

“Greetings!” Thor’s almost as loud as Becca as he exits the van, drawing all the focus from Steve and Bucky’s sisters with a smile and a wave. “It is truly an honor to meet the kin of Bucky Barnes.”

There’s an appreciative murmur through the crowd, particularly from the women. By the van, Tony’s sulking.

A man with silver hair, close behind Becca’s wheelchair, extends his hand to Bucky. “I’m James,” he says. “Rebecca’s son. It’s great to finally meet you.”

James Cleary. Born in 1945, according to Jo’s email. He was an accountant, but he’s been retired for over a decade. Bucky’s oldest nephew. He has Becca’s smile as Bucky shakes his hand. “It’s wonderful to meet you.”

James puts his arm around Bucky’s shoulder, steering him to face the rest of the crowd. “Come on,” he says, sounding more like a grandfather than a nephew. “I’ll introduce you to everybody.”

And he does. There’s Becca’s daughter, Susan Wilson, a retired schoolteacher who’s the spitting image of Bucky’s mama. Her children: Christopher Wilson the mechanic, Stephanie Goldman the journalist, and Robert Wilson, the doctor. Jo has five kids: Kathleen Whittaker, Judith Seymour, William Roth, and the twins Linda and David Roth.

And those are just his sisters’ children. There are so many others, as many as Bucky had expected when he realized Jo had five kids. He makes eye contact as he shakes everyone’s hand, trying not to notice which smiles look forced or which hands jerk away the fastest. He tries to remember something about each of them. Michael’s trilingual. Ramona sells costumes at renaissance fairs. Jason’s a carpenter. Shannon’s a competitive surfer. Jenny flips houses for a living. Emily Michelle lives in Texas.

Emily Michelle has a daughter, the little girl in the overalls who keeps throwing her badge on the pavement. The girl has dark hair that brushes her shoulders and clear blue eyes that make Bucky think of his mother. She’s holding a stuffed black dragon by the tail. “This is Winifred,” Emily Michelle says, and Bucky smiles, extending his hand.

“That’s a nice name. Hello, Winifred.”

“ _Don’t touch me_!” Winifred shouts, taking a step back. She throws the badge on the ground again as she does.

“Thank you for telling us how you feel, Freddie.” Her mother leans down to retrieve the badge and doesn’t seem to mind that she’s ignored when she offers it out. “Good job letting us know. Here, we can put this on your dragon’s wings if you don’t want to wear it.”

“Then he can’t fly,” Freddie snaps.

“Sorry.” Emily Michelle straightens, turning to Bucky. “I should have warned you she doesn’t like people she doesn’t know touching her. She’s learning to communicate, but we’re still working on phrasing.”

“That’s okay.” Still smiling, Bucky takes a step back himself, lowering his hand to his side. _Don’t touch me._ She stood up for herself immediately with no hesitation. This kid is fantastic. “I like your dragon, Freddie.”

“His name’s Toothless,” she says. Bucky can’t be sure if his transgression is forgiven because her expression is unreadable and her voice flat.

“I know.” Bucky watched _How to Train Your Dragon_ with Tasha. It was good—Bucky had never seen a movie with an amputee hero before—but he’s not allowed to watch the sequel. “He’s a Night Fury.”

“Night Furies are the rarest, most intelligent dragons,” Freddie informs him. “They have the largest wing-to-body ratio of any dragon and they can take off vertically.”

“I didn’t know that.” James is beginning to lead him toward another set of relatives, so Bucky gives a little wave. “That’s cool.”

By the time the introductions are over, all of the Avengers are out of the van and milling through the crowd. Most of the women are drawn to Thor, Bucky’s not surprised to see, and almost all of the children have migrated to Clint or Bruce. One of the boys, Brycer, who is in the fifth grade and skateboards, gives Tony an appraising look. “You didn’t bring your suit,” he says.

“He has a point,” Bruce says.

“Hawkeye didn’t bring his bow,” Tony counters.

Brycer shrugs and joins the other children gathered around Clint.

“Too bad you took out those implants,” Bruce says. “Otherwise you could just call the suit to you now.”

“Shut up.”

“You doing all right, Buck?” Steve asks. He’s still carrying the bear, and there’s a hint of flush that hasn’t fully faded from his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Bucky’s not sure if the embarrassment is from Becca’s tirade or if he’s been hit on numerous times during the introductions. Maybe both.

Bucky glances at Bucky Bear. The bear’s only opinion of the situation is that there are a lot of people. He doesn’t seem troubled or excited by it. Bucky’s own heart rate is steady, provided he distracts himself from wondering how many of his family members watched the trial and how many are struggling to conceal their revulsion, hatred, or pity.

“I’m fine,” he says. “How are you, shithead?”

Steve just laughs and smacks Bucky with the bear.

*

The zoo is divided into zones based on the type of animals in each section. They begin in the Lost Forest, heading down the Orangutan Trail. Bucky stays at the front of the group with his sisters, pushing Jo’s chair as James guides Becca’s. Steve, Sam, and Bucky Bear hover close by, with the rest of the family and team spread out behind them.

The orangutans are big and shaggy, munching on oranges and pulling themselves along branches.

“Look, Nat,” Bucky can hear Clint say behind him. “It’s your ancestors.”

The children giggle. Then there’s a noise that Bucky thinks is Clint being punched lightly in the stomach, and they laugh out loud.

“Hey, Clint,” Natasha says a bit later, when the kids are all captivated by a mandrill’s bright blue backside. “Looks like you’ve got a family reunion here too.”

There are so many animals: gorillas, tigers, hippos, tapirs, and two aviaries, all just in one section of the zoo. Bucky pauses before each enclosure, dutifully glancing over the animals, but he’s focused on his sisters. They have seventy years to catch up on and Bucky isn’t about to miss another minute.

They never run out of things to talk—shout—about. Their parents, their careers, their husbands and children. Becca had briefly remarried a decade after her first husband’s death and happily tells Bucky that her second husband “was an even bigger shithead than that Rogers boy” who later “lost all his money when his mistress ran off with it, serves the asshole right.”

They talk a lot about their children and mostly compare them to Bucky.

“I always said Susan looked just like you growing up—”

“Susan always looked like Dad, Becca. Now, David, he was the spitting image of Bucky.”

“He was the spitting image of your husband!”

“He had Bucky’s chin!”

“Only after he busted it falling off that slide.”

It strikes Bucky, as he stands before the marmosets, that he may be able to determine how he’ll look when he’s older by studying his nieces and nephews. It’s a strange thought.

Neither of them seems to mind when Bucky can’t remember things from their childhood, even though it happens with almost every anecdote they bring up. Maybe they’ve had friends go senile. Or maybe Steve had been very thorough in briefing them on how to respond to him once Becca finally stopped shouting into the phone.

The other members of the family seem to cycle through the crowd, spending a few minutes talking to the siblings before slipping off again to study the animals or to talk to one of the Avengers. Bucky overhears his great-great nephew Colby—the self-described entrepreneur from Flagstaff—begin a long conversation with Tony about Stark Industries’ stockholders. That this conversation is mostly one-sided doesn’t appear to deter Colby in the least.

But Thor gathers the most followers. Many Midgardian animals are new to him, and he reacts to the sight of them the way Bucky half-remembers marveling over aliens in comic books as a child. Thor is most enamored with the flamingos.

Tony didn’t just buy everyone’s admittance to the zoo. He also got them special backstage privileges so that they all get to see certain animals up close. The flamingos are one such animal, and the zookeepers hand out plastic cups filled with a slurry of food chunks and water for everyone to feed the flamingos with. The birds, having no fear of humans, rush to the group, chattering loudly. One pale pink flamingo dips its head into Bucky’s cup, entire body vibrating with the force of its bill flapping as it laps up the food.

“I enjoy these flamangos!” Thor says, smiling at the vivid orange-red bird honking in front of him.

“Flamingos,” says Sophia, who is six and got an award for perfect attendance at the kindergarten graduation last spring.

“Flamingos,” he agrees. “They have remarkable balance and are a most striking color!”

“They get their coloring from their food,” one of the zookeepers explains. She’s staring at Thor with as much wonder as he’s giving the birds, but her words are steady. “Once their feathers molt off, they turn white.”

Thor’s smile somehow brightens, which Bucky wouldn’t have thought possible. “So they become the color of whatever they are fed?”

Bucky imagines a purple flamingo. He asks Bruce if science has created any, but Bruce says that’s not his field of study.

After the Lost Forest, they enter the Panda Canyon. Most everyone is enthralled by the giant black and white pandas, gathered close to the enclosure to watch the pandas lumber around their habitat. But Bucky and Natasha linger before the red pandas, watching them munch on leaves. Two of the pandas are wrestling on the ground, squeaking as they climb over each other.

“Your panda’s missing all the excitement,” Bucky says.

“Didn’t want to risk her running off.” Natasha pulls out her phone, taking a video. “I’ll show her this when we get home.”

*

In the Panda Canyon, they stop for lunch at a cafe. There’s something for everyone, no matter what their dietary restrictions. Bucky can’t tell if that’s the regular menu or if Tony brought in caterers. He settles into his chair under one of the canopy umbrellas, takes a bite of his burger, and immediately drips teriyaki sauce and pineapple juice onto his metal hand.

He’s retrieving extra napkins when someone speaks behind him. “Does it rust?”

Bucky turns around, struggling for a moment to place the man standing there. Mark. Jo’s grandson. He works for a car dealership in Chatham, Illinois. “Excuse me?”

“Your arm.” Mark lowers his gaze, rubbing at the back of his neck with the hand not holding his soda, as though he’s just now thought better of asking. “Does it rust any?”

“No.” Bucky scrubs at the metal with the napkins. “It’s, uh, stainless steel. And fully waterproof.” HYDRA wouldn’t have outfitted him with something that needed protecting every time he went on a mission in the rain. Or bathed.

“Ain’t that something.” His great-nephew shifted on his feet, taking a sip of Coke. “Listen, Sara and I—we watched your trial on TV. I guess the whole country did, you know?”

“Probably,” Bucky says. His throat is suddenly, horribly dry.

“Well, I just wanted to say—I’m real sorry about everything you went through, Uncle Buck.” Mark pauses, laughing a little. “You’re younger than me and you’re my uncle—don’t that beat it all? But I am. Sorry, I mean. Nobody oughta go through all of that.”

Bucky manages to force out a thank you, praying that will be the end of it.

It’s not.

“Listen, can I ask something?”

He can’t speak. Every awful memory he’d managed to set aside in his sisters’ presence, every hellish recollection, is dragging itself back to the surface. All Bucky can do is stand there, replaying his torments and imagining what awful thing his nephew will speak aloud. _How small the cage the Russians put you in? Was Pierce the only one who fucked you? Did you really think you were his kid?_

“Did you take out Kennedy?” Mark asks.

Bucky tries to swallow reflexively, but he only chokes on air. “What?”

“The Kennedy assassination.” Mark takes a step back at the noise. “JFK, you know? Was that you?”

“I—” Bucky can swallow now and does. He’s not sure if the feeling through him is relief or annoyance. “I don’t know. Can’t remember.”

“Oh,” says Mark, looking disappointed. “See, the guys at the office had a bet about whether or not—”

“For Christ’s sake, Mark, leave the man alone.” There’s a woman—Sara, Mark’s wife—rushing up to them. “You ass—can’t you tell he doesn’t want to talk about that? Why would you ever even ask him?”

“I didn’t mean nothing by—”

“Just go sit down,” Sara orders. “Before he loses his patience and breaks your skull.” She shoves her husband, glaring, and he shrugs, shuffling back to his seat. “I’m so sorry,” she adds, turning back to Bucky. “He doesn’t mean any harm—he really doesn’t—but he doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose, I swear.”

“It’s all right,” Bucky mutters. And really, Sara looks more offended than he feels.

“Like hell it is.” She shakes her head, tension tugging at her brow, and glances around. “Listen, when I was a little girl—I had this teacher, back in grade school, and she—you know?”

Bucky does know, stomach twisting.

“What happened to me—that was hell. And I can’t even imagine how much worse it was for you. How much it’s gotta hurt to have some idiot drag it all up outta nowhere. So I’m sorry, more than I can say.” And suddenly, she’s hugging him.

Blinking and stiff, Bucky doesn’t move.

“You’re so important,” Sara says, squeezing her arms around him. “All you’ve gone through—that you’re still standing, and the world knows it. You have no idea how important you are.”

Bucky knows that he’s important. He’s important in a blood-soaked, changing-history-for-the-worse sort of way. He’d rather not be. When Sara lets go, he rushes back to his seat and eats in silence. His sisters, recuperating from all of the storytelling, don’t question it.

As they finish their meals, the children congregate to the asphalt in front of the dining area. Bucky isn’t sure if it’s deliberate; some of the kids start up a game of tag, but others just sit. One of the older boys toys with a cell phone, and one of the girls is playing on a DS. Maybe they’re all just taking refuge from the adult conversations in the same space.

For all the time he spends as a five year old, Bucky can’t remember the last time he was actually near children.

He finds Sam and Steve at another table, talking to his great-great niece Laura about her tours in Iraq. Waiting for a lull in the conversation, Bucky then gently tugs on Steve’s sleeve.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I need the bear,” Bucky says, running his fingers over the little brass buttons on Bucky Bear’s coat once Steve hands him over.

“What for?” Sam asks. Neither he nor Steve look concerned, not yet, but the potential is there.

“Observation.”

There’s a twitch to Steve’s mouth like he wants further explanation, but he doesn’t ask. Bucky is careful not to cradle the bear against his chest, trying to hold him as a disinterested parent would, so none of his friends will worry.

There’s probably a minimum distance Bucky needs to keep from the children to present the image of being harmless and mildly curious as opposed to reminding everyone that he’s a murderer and an assault victim. Bucky isn’t sure what that distance is, but no one’s rushing to move the children away, so he assumes he hasn’t crossed it.

Actual children are a lot louder than Bucky’s ever acted, he finds. They’re rough with each other, either not realizing their own strength or just unconcerned by it. They seem almost incapable of standing still and they flit from one topic to another, yet never seem to have trouble following the rapid conversation. Bucky Bear agrees with all these observations.

“Uh, Uncle Bucky?”

Bucky turns his head to find Liam, the second grader who collects Pokemon cards, shifting awkwardly by his side. “Yeah?”

“Can I—um—if you don’t mind, I mean—can I, well—can I see your arm?”

Of course. If one good thing came out of Bucky’s experiences in court, at least he’s learned to keep a neutral expression in most situations. It’s nothing personal. Kids like robots. It doesn’t mean that’s all anyone sees when they look at him. Probably. “Sure.”

At least the shirt covers his scarring when Bucky slides off his jacket. No one needs to see that, and least of all his sisters.

“Whoa,” says Liam. Behind him, the other children are taking note, drawing in. “Can I touch it? Please?”

“It’s cold,” Bucky warns, watching Liam’s fingers twitch as he strokes down it. “It has to be, to keep the machinery inside working.”

“Do the pieces lift up?” Kayley asks. She’s Brycer’s older sister and she had braces put on in January.

“Yes. But they’re heavy and they’d pinch your fingers,” he adds, before anyone can try. “Here, watch.” Gently, he lifts Liam’s hand off and then tenses his arm, the plates drawing closer together.

There’s a collective “Cool!” from the kids, followed by nearly all of them asking if they can touch it too.

“Can you feel this?” asks Joshua, the sixth grader from Hoboken.

“Sort of. I can feel that you’re touching it, but I can only tell how many hands are on me because I’m looking. Here, uh—” Bucky chooses one of the older kids at random. “Madison. Okay, everybody let go except for Madison. Now, if I close my eyes, and Madison touches my arm, I won’t be able to tell how many fingers she’s using. In fact, she could put a finger from either hand on my arm, and I wouldn’t be able to tell there’s more than one hand touching me unless she moved them about, uh, three inches apart. See?”

He shuts his eyes. There’s a faint touch against the metal. “How many fingers do you feel?” Madison asks.

“Two.” Bucky has no idea, not really, but it’d probably be less fun for them if he said so.

“It’s four!” Another of the kids calls out.

“I wanna try!”

“No, me next!”

He opens his eyes. “Everyone can try. Just make a line, okay?”

They do. The littler kids don’t quite grasp the point of the game, but they’re giggling and smiling as they poke at the steel, so he doesn’t try to correct them. At one point Emily Michelle comes over and implores them to leave the nice man alone, but Bucky assures her it’s fine.

“I don’t mind,” he says, letting Joshua’s adopted four year old sister Endelea cling to his bicep as he dangles her a few inches off the ground. “It’s okay.”

Honestly, it is. It’s _nice_ to watch them react as though his prosthetic is the coolest thing in the world, not a constant reminder of HYDRA’s impact on his life. It’s nice that they’re willing to gather around him, laughing and playing, instead of hovering back or staring fearfully.

And besides, Bucky Bear’s getting a lot of observing done.

“It looks like you have scales,” Freddie says, staring at Bucky past the Toothless doll she’s waving in the air. “Like dragon scales.”

“What kind of dragon?” he asks, letting Laura’s daughter Emma pose his fingers like a doll’s.

Freddie considers it. “Your scales are like Skullcrusher’s. That’s Stoick’s dragon. He can track anything by its scent and he uses his head like a battering ram. But you’re not the right color. Your colors are more like a Smothering Smokebreath.”

“You wanna touch the scales?”

Freddie doesn’t answer, focus returned to the stuffed dragon she’s waving around.

“Okay, Emma,” Laura says, taking a seat beside her daughter. “Let somebody else have a turn.” But she makes no attempt to move her preschooler, staring at Bucky’s arm with an expression he’s never seen anyone give it before. It’s not disgust or pity, but it’s not fascination either. It’s almost like a hunger.

Then he remembers. Laura was hit by an IED in Iraq. Her right leg is amputated just below the knee. She’s clearly used to the prosthetic, as she barely has a limp and all this walking around hasn’t troubled her, but it isn’t like Bucky’s. It can’t feel anything.

“You know,” he says, as Emma tries unsuccessfully to pop the metal joints, “Tony Stark’s been studying the tech in my arm, recreating it. If you want, I’m sure he’d look into making something for you. He wouldn’t charge anything.”

“Oh, Bucky.” Laura puts a hand to her chest, shaking her head. “I couldn’t possibly ask—”

“You’re family,” Bucky says. “You don’t have to.”

*

“Is that a skunk?” Jo asks, staring at the small black and white creature shuffling around the enclosure.

“Honey badger,” Bucky reads from the sign.

“Does it eat honey?” Becca asks, shuffling her wheelchair forward.

With a shrug, Bucky continues reading. “Does the honey badger have a sweet personality? No! It would be hard to find a more quarrelsome animal than the honey badger. Listed as the Guinness Book of World Records’ Most Fearless Animal, the honey badger doesn’t start fights it can’t finish.”

“Sounds like Steve,” Sam says.

Steve flushes a little. “Shut up.”

“The honey badger’s skin is so thick it can withstand bee stings, porcupine quills, and even dog bites!” Bucky goes on, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb over Bucky Bear’s nose. “They are also resistant to snake venom.”

From the corner of his eye, Bucky can see Sam elbow Steve in the ribs.

“Its proper name is ratel, but it gets its common name from what seems to be its favorite food: honey. Yet what the animal is actually looking to eat are the bee larvae found in the honey.”

“I don’t eat insects!” Steve protests as Sam nudges him again.

“You ate snails in France,” Bucky says. He’s mostly sure of that memory, anyway.

“They were _cooked,_ and I was trying to avoid an international incident.”

“Oh, calm down, shithead,” Becca says, waving a shaking hand at them. “I’m trying to watch the skunk.”

The honey badger snorts in their direction, digging its claws into the ground as if to say he could take any of them, Captain America included.

There are lions, jaguars, and reindeer. There are elephants, which Thor likes almost as much as the flamingos. They’re given the opportunity to feed giraffes biscuits, and Bucky learns that giraffes have black tongues. There are koalas, which Bucky likes even more than the red pandas, and two grizzly bears.

Bucky Bear likes the grizzlies so much that they linger after everyone else has wandered on, pressed right up against the fence. The bears aren’t moving, but they don’t need to. The power lurking below their fur is apparent even when they’re lying down, dozing. He’s transfixed by their mouths, the hints of teeth behind their black lips. He can’t imagine the force behind those jaws.

“Bucky?”

Bucky blinks, turning to see Steve behind him. “Huh?”

“Come on,” Steve says, his hand settling gently on Bucky’s shoulder. “Everybody’s moving on.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll find you Youtube videos of bears once we get to the hotel,” Steve promises, moving his arm over Bucky’s shoulders as they follow after the group. “We’re almost at the cheetah, you’ll like that.”

The cheetah is another of the special privileges their group is afforded. They’re allowed up close to one of the zoo’s cheetahs, and moreover they’re allowed to be photographed with it. Both Tony and the zoo staff have assured them it’s perfectly safe, and Bucky imagines it is.

Though he can’t help but imagine it from the cheetah’s perspective. If Bucky were a cheetah, he thinks he would want to run around, eating gazelles and stretching out in the sun. He wouldn’t want to be fenced in some cramped space, only let out when other people wanted him for something, and then thrown back in as soon as he was done. Bucky thinks he would hate that.

“We should let the kids go first,” he says once they reach the cheetah photo op. It seems better than balking at doing it at all. Less likely to raise concern among his friends that way. “Otherwise they’ll get impatient.”

Steve doesn’t question it.

Freddie does not want to approach the cheetah or even look at it, which she expresses with tears and shouting until her mother guides her to the next enclosure. Bucky excuses himself and follows after them, both concerned and grateful for an excuse to slip away. He finds Emily Michelle and Freddie in front of the rhinoceros fence. Rhinos, apparently, are preferable to cheetahs. Freddie is waving her Toothless in the air before her again.

“Hey,” Bucky says, stopping a good four feet away from them. “Are you okay, Freddie?”

Freddie doesn’t answer, humming to herself. She leans against the fence, the buttons of her overalls clanking against the metal.

“Freddie,” Emily Michelle said. “Your Uncle Bucky just asked how you are. What do you say when someone asks how you are?”

“Fine,” Freddie says, her eyes on the dragon.

“That’s good,” Bucky says, glancing at the girl’s mother. “I’m glad.”

“She _is_ fine.” Tilting her head back toward the cheetah enclosure, Emily Michelle gives a resigned little smile. “It’s just hard to predict how she’ll react to unfamiliar situations sometimes. She was okay with all the other big cats. I guess it’s just getting close to one that she doesn’t like.”

“Smart kid.”

They fall into silence watching Freddie play with Toothless. She tosses the dragon into the air, then catches him. And repeats the motion. Again and again. It’s hypnotic. Bucky has dropped Bucky Bear off of objects sometimes, if they’re playing Parachuting, but he’s never thrown him up in the air. Bucky Bear can’t fly, after all.

Up and down. Up and down. Up and—

There’s a gust of wind and Toothless comes down just out of reach. Freddie’s fingers don’t close around his body; they nudge him forward. Forward and over the edge of the fence, down into the enclosure.

Freddie watches the dragon fall, a slow whimper slipping from her lips.

“Oh!” Emily Michelle says. “Oh, it’s okay, sweetie. I’ll just get one of the zookeepers—we’ll get Toothless back, don’t worry—”

Bucky watches as his great-great-great niece begins to hyperventilate. He stares down into the enclosure. It’s not a big drop at all, maybe four feet down from the rock wall below the fence. The closest rhinoceros is several yards away.

He looks at Bucky Bear. Bucky Bear isn’t hesitant.

Bucky closes the space between himself and Freddie, placing Bucky Bear in her hands. “Hold my bear please,” he says, hauling one leg over the fence.

“Bucky!” her mother shrieks. “You can’t—”

He gets the other leg over and drops down.

Bucky lands silently, crouching onto the ground. His shoes sink a little into the mud. He straightens, scanning the rest of the enclosure. None of the rhinos have moved. The nearest one stares at him and snorts, but it’s otherwise still.

“Bucky!” Emily Michelle calls again.

The rhino is motionless.

Exhaling, Bucky slowly turns his body back toward the wall of the enclosure, where the dragon is lying right at the juncture of the rock and the grass. He doesn’t move his eyes from the rhinoceros. Gradually, barely moving, he begins to bend down.

There are more voices from above now, words he doesn’t listen to, focused on the task at hand. Emily Michelle’s yelling must have drawn the others over. The rhino flicks its eyes up toward the fence before looking back at him. Absently, Bucky thinks that rhinos can run at fifty kilometers an hour. He doesn’t know why he knows that, if it was mission-relevant or if he heard it from some program on Animal Planet.

His left hand brushes something. Bucky has to grasp it with the right hand to be sure it’s Toothless. He clutches the dragon against his chest, grasping the fence above the rock with his metal fingers. Bucky hauls himself, bracing his feet against the wall as he scrambles up the surface.

He doesn’t reach the top before there’s a hand closing around his wrist. It’s Thor, leaning halfway over the fence himself, and tugging Bucky up as though he has the weight of a kitten. “That was foolish, dear one,” Thor says sternly, setting Bucky down on the pavement.

He’s far from the only one with an admonishment.

“Completely nuts.” Happy’s red-faced. If he gets much more worked up, he’ll be foaming at the mouth. “ _Completely_ nuts. If anything happens to you, Pepper’s gonna have my head, and you go and throw yourself in—”

“Have you lost your damn mind, Bucky?” Becca shouts. “You never had much common sense, but you at least had enough to keep from giving your sisters heart attacks!”

“What kind of example are you setting?” Jo adds, and it’s only then that Bucky notices the awed look on the children’s faces.

“If anything had happened to you, I’d never be able to forgive myself.” Emily Michelle is wiping at her eyes, trembling.

“Uh,” Bucky says. “Please don’t cr—”

He’s cut off as Steve grabs onto him, wrapping him in a tight, shaking bear hug. “Don’t scare me like that.” His voice is rough in Bucky’s ear, a little choked. “Super soldier or not, Buck, I can’t bear to see you get hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. He says it again. And again. He’s apologized to most every family member personally by the time he feels it’s all right to step away and return Toothless to Freddie. She’s still clinging to Bucky Bear, white-knuckled.

“Here you go.” He kneels down, offering the dragon.

“Thank you.” She holds out the bear. Bucky’s careful not to brush his fingers against hers as the animals are exchanged.

Tony gathers the kids for a brief lecture on why jumping into zoo enclosures isn’t cool. He’s immediately dismissed in favor of talk about how “freaking awesome” Bucky was. Bruce’s smirk probably doesn’t help his mood.

Their last stop in the zoo is the reptile house. There’s a komodo dragon, as Emily Michelle happily points out to Freddie. But the lizard is perched near the heat lamps at the top of his enclosure, in an awkward position cramped up in a corner near the plexiglass viewing window. Bucky can hardly see him and at Freddie’s height, she can’t see anything at all.

Bucky’s stepping back to try and allow her a better view when Freddie tugs on his pant leg. “Pick me up. I can’t see.”

Startled, Bucky assumes he’s misheard. “You want me to pick you up?”

“I can’t see,” she repeats, tugging on his jeans again.

Bending down, he carefully places his hands on her waist. “Let me know if you want me to put you down,” he says, hoisting her up. He could just hold her above his head—as little as she weighs, it’s like holding a pillow for a super soldier—but he doubts his hands digging into her ribs is comfortable, and so positions her behind him, her legs settled over his shoulders. Freddie rests her hands on top of his head. “Can you see him?”

“Yes,” she says.

“You like him?”

“Komodo dragons are the heaviest lizards on Earth,” Freddie says. “They live in Indonesia and are mostly scavengers, though they also eat live prey.”

“Cool.”

*

Bucky tugs up his pajama pants, then yanks on the hem of his shirt to make sure his waistband is completely hidden. His pull-ups don’t extend up past his pajama pants anyway, but he wants to be sure. Bucky Bear, sitting the towels on top of the toilet tank, agrees that he’s covered up. One of the nicest things about this hotel is that their suite has more than one bathroom, so Bucky can spend as much time as he wants getting changed and no one will get annoyed.

Most of his family is on their way back home already. But Bucky and the Avengers are in San Diego for a few more days, as is Jo, so he can spend longer with just his sisters.

“Bucky?” Daddy knocks on the door. “You ready for bed?”

“Uh-huh.” He scoops up Bucky Bear, shuffling to the door. He really is ready. Today was fun, but he was tired before the plane even landed, let alone before he met everybody.

“Want me to find you grizzly bear videos?” Daddy asks when Bucky opens the door, ruffling his hair.

“Bucky Bear wants to watch them,” Bucky corrects. He holds his bear up, looking around the penthouse suite for maybe the hundredth time. It’s so big. Tony said it would be like having a big sleepover, but Bucky’s never had a sleepover where people could sleep in whole other rooms before. “The grizzlies were his favorite.”

“Oh?” Daddy kisses Bucky Bear’s nose. “Then I’ll find some for him. What was your favorite, Buck?”

“The koalas. They looked the cuddliest.” Well, the red pandas had looked the cuddliest, but they also looked like they would jump all over a person, and Bucky’s pretty sure red pandas have claws. He thinks koalas have claws too, but the koalas had sat pretty still. If they have their eucalyptus leaves, Bucky guesses they’re mostly very calm.

“Wanna watch koalas, then?” The room spins for a second as Daddy picks Bucky up, carrying him to his bed.

“Uh-uh.” He yawns as he settles onto the bed, nudging Bucky Bear toward the Starkpad on the night stand. He’ll fall right asleep if he watches koalas sitting, munching on plants. Besides, people got really upset about Bucky jumping into the rhino enclosure earlier, and while Daddy promised Bucky no one was mad at him on the ride to the hotel, nobody had reassured Bucky Bear. It was at least half because of Bucky Bear’s suggestion that Bucky went after Toothless, and Bucky doesn’t want the bear to feel like he’s in trouble.

Daddy props up the tablet, making sure it’s angled so Bucky Bear can see. “Does he want baby bears?”

“Bears hunting,” Bucky says.

The video Daddy finds is of a grizzly smacking fish out of a river, which isn’t quite what Bucky Bear was after, but the bear is happy anyway. “You want a story, Bucky?”

“Wanna hear ‘bout the animals on Asgard,” Bucky says. He knows there’s at least one eight-legged horse on Thor’s planet, but are they all like that? Are they part spider? Tasha would like that.

“I’m sure Thor will tell you all about them once he gets back from the pool,” Daddy says. Thor, Clint, and Tasha are all in the pool outside. Bucky had been too tired for swimming, though, so he’d stayed in to get ready for bed. “Think you can stay awake?”

“Yeah.”

“You want anything else while you wait?”

“Tony should tell me a story.” Bucky reaches his fingers out, stroking Bucky Bear’s fur. Not hard. He doesn’t want to distract him from the grizzlies.

“Tony?”

“None of the other kids were excited about him today,” Bucky explains. His eyes flutter shut for just a second, but he opens them again. “I don’t want him to feel bad.”

“I’ll find Tony.” Daddy straightens up. “He’s probably drinking the whole mini-bar.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Bucky?” Daddy stops walking toward the door, turning back to the bed.

“I—” Bucky tries to shrug, but he’s lying down, so all he ends up doing is scrunching up his shirt a little. He takes hold of the hem, squirming to right the fabric. “I’m just—I really liked meeting my family today, mostly.”

“I’m glad.”

“But I like having you and Tony and Tasha and everybody else as my family too.” Bucky bites his lip. “I don’t wanna give that up.”

“Hey.” Daddy’s back at the bedside now, holding Bucky’s hand.. “You don’t have to. You can have more than one family, Bucky. Even if they’re not related. Remember Brooklyn? We were brothers, just with different parents. You know I listed you as my next of kin in the army? You can have whatever family you want, Buck. You can have two, if you want them. You deserve it.”

“But Becca was mad at you.”

“That’s just because she didn’t like how she found out you were alive.” Daddy entwines his fingers with Bucky’s. “She missed you. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want us to take care of you.”

“Promise?” Bucky asks.

“I promise.” Daddy bends down, kissing Bucky’s forehead. “Now, you want me to get Tony to tell you a story?”

Bucky nods.

“All right, I’ll be right back. Love you, Bucky.”

“Love you too.”

Daddy leaves the light on as he goes, but Bucky feels his eyes flutter shut anyway. He shakes his head, opens his eyes, holds in a yawn. Beside him, Bucky Bear’s still watching the grizzly bear fishing. Bucky listens to the rhythm of the river, his eyes feeling so heavy. It won’t hurt to rest them; he can stay awake. His fingers still, slipping away from Bucky Bear’s fur as he shuts his eyes. Just for a minute.

**Author's Note:**

> A lovely anonymous commenter on Tumblr submitted to me a follow-up story from Freddie's point of view: [What I Did on Vacation by Freddie Seymour.](http://lauralot89.tumblr.com/post/112646045106/what-i-did-on-vacation-by-freddie-seymour) Check it out!
> 
> Bucky has not seen the _How to Train Your Dragon_ sequel both because it involves a villain with a metal left arm and because its plot includes mind control to make a character attack his friends.
> 
> All of the animals encountered by Bucky and company in the zoo are real exhibits at the San Diego Zoo, at least at the time of this writing. There are backstage passes at the zoo that include [feeding flamingos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eun2OSuYg2M) and [photographs with cheetahs.](http://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/tours/backstage-pass)
> 
> Save for the portion about the Guinness Book of Records, the information Bucky reads about the honey badger is taken entirely from the [San Diego Zoo webpages](http://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/animals/honey-badger-ratel-0) on [the honey badger.](http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/honey-badger-ratel)
> 
> Bucky's sensitivity in his metal arm is based on a nerve test I received after a wisdom tooth extraction removed some of the feeling from my face. They would poke at my skin with needles and see if I could still feel multiple needles as they moved closer together.


End file.
